An interview with my brother {with pictures!}

Remember my post from yesterday? The one where I told the story of how my brother got lost in the forest of the Swiss Alps and hitchhiked home when he was seven or eight years old?

[This is us. Brett is on the right. Obviously, he was much younger in this picture but I thought it was cute. Plus, you'll see it again in a few days when I post a near lookalike picture of my son Griffin.]

Well, I sent him some interview questions about that adventure, and following are his answers. It seems both mine and my mom's memory of the story are somewhat (or completely) different from Brett's. I guess that's what happens when you let thirty years go by without writing down the details, huh? If only there were blogs in the seventies. Then we'd all be set.

Without further adieu, here's my bro:

Do you remember this story? I mean, do you really remember the episode?

Yes, I remember the story very well. Some parts were like they just happened, the feel of the wheat when I walked through the field, the Citroen car. But then some parts were, are, hazy and I either blocked them out or I was so emotional (read: crying, wailing and balling) that I didn't have the mental capacity to remember those parts. Like how I got from the business in France to our house on Impasse de Mon-Idee.

No kidding, I don't recall how old I was when this happened. I'm guessing 8 but it was anywhere between 5 and 9, as I turned 10 upon our return State-side.

[I'm assuming this picture was taken the winter either before or after this adventure. Nice how my brothers both looked totally rad while I am decked out in a freaking tulip snowsuit??]

Whoops, getting ahead of myself and as I see the questions you've submitted to me, I think I need to fill in some important parts. It started out as any other day where my stay-at-home mother shipped off her two oh-so-well-behaved boys and Heather to a day camp in order to save her sanity -- looking back and having kids myself, I better understand that mentality. The camp would then bus us to the foothills of the French Alps in France. I recall it being a very short bus ride, so I guess I assumed it wasn't that far away distance wise, not that a elementary aged school boy would remember details like time, distance or spacial relationships when goofing off with his friends on the bus.

So it was like the second week at camp and we'd managed to make an awesome fort out of a fallen pine tree across a little gulch with branches [interruption by Heather - I totally remember that part about camp], leaves and some junk found on the side of the road near a farmers pastures with cows. We even had a forbidden fire that we'd start when we got there in the morning and put out when we left for the day (read: left burning itself out most likely).
That particular day we'd gotten busted for the Nth time that week so the counsellors decided we needed to do something with the larger group as a whole because our Lord Of The Flies camping was getting out of hand.

So that day they split up the entire group after lunch for Capture the Flag. I was on the side that stayed put and the other 1/2 went down a ways in the wooded area to setup their flag. I don't recall, but I'm guessing the counsellors gave them a 5 minute head start and we started playing. Being the young Patton that I clearly was, I decided a wide right flanking maneuver would be best, so I made a huge right-to-left banana bend attack at where I assumed their flag would be stationed.

I walked and ran. Ran and walked. I kept going and going, knowing that my flanking move wouldn't have been protected by these novice Capture the Flaggers. I went about ten minutes at top speeds to capture their flag, end the game and get back to our fire! Yes, I was a pyro back then. [Another interruption by Heather - We were all pyros back then! I don't know why, but us kids really liked fires and firecrackers.]

Then I realized my ten minute attack was a bit too far and I may have outflanked myself, so I tried to turn around the way that I came although when you're young and in the forest, the trees all look the same and they were also my only landmarks I'd used, for example "that huge tree with green moss on the base back there", except for the fallen trees that I'd crossed occasionally which I'm guessing I figured were unique to that area of the woods in France. See how confusing and disjointed that last sentence was; same for my land navigation skills through woods back then!

I was now only walking but it'd been about ten minutes and I assumed I'd return to where we started but nothing looked right. Keep in mind, I hadn't seen anyone since they shouted "Go!" to start the game. So I kept walking 'cuz maybe I was close but just didn't go quite far enough.

A few minutes later I came to a clearing where there was a wheat field that slopped down to another patch of trees and what appeared to be pasture land off in the distance. But looking to my left -- again, thinking that my right hand flank was still in affect -- I noticed that the wheat field disappeared back up into the woods so I was going to head that way, cut into the wood, STILL capture their flag and we'd win.

By the time I walked maybe the 200 yards to where the field turned uphill to meet the woods, I ran across a fence stopping me from re-entering the woods. It was now that I stopped thinking about capturing their flag and being the hero of the camp. But thankfully I was still too naive to understand what was going on.

My plan was now to head down through the wheat field to the road on the other side of the patch of trees I thought I'd seen, follow the road up to where the buses drop us off & pick us up and I'd at least be back in camp. Panic had now begun to slowly creep into my mind because I remember running through the wheat which was about my chest height at that time of year and ran towards the trees thinking I had better hurry up or I'd get in trouble for quitting the game.

The trees were thicker than were we started playing capture the flag -- blasted stupid game, who invented this f*ing game anyway at this point in time -- and I had trouble getting through the thick brush, and I was getting tired, so I turned ninety degrees to my right to skirt the edge of the tree patch on my way to the road and the camp. But when I went halfway around what I remember from 20 minutes ago when I first saw the patch of trees, I was assuming it was the road, it turned out to be more wheat fields, so I decided that at this point walking down slope was much easier than sideways to get to the blasted road and camp...oh how I just wanted to get back to camp.

Who knows how long I walked before I finally hit a road, although I remember crossing a few dirt paths that farm tractors had created. When I hit the road I was now okay to find my way back - young logic at it's finest! But not knowing which way I should walk, I walked away from the mountains towards Geneva and home. Possibly because panic had completely set in and I was tired of walking and downhill was easier than uphill, I don't recall.

When cars would zoom past, I would stick my thumb out in the hopes of hitching a ride to base camp. Yeah, it was the mid-70's and hitching was still an option for the wanna-be hippies and dropouts....probably not suitable for kids my age, but I'd seen plenty of them during our trips around Europe, so what the heck. Did I know where I was? Nope. Did I know how to speak French well enough to ask the locals how to get there? Nope. Didn't matter, I was a little kid from the day camp and in my thinking, since I knew about the camp site, everyone in the area knew about it too.

A couple stopped in a Citroen car and picked me up. They only spoke French. I spoke English and a few words of French - but knowing "where's the bathroom?" or "check please" or other survival language skills were no match for their fast foreign tongues and my young American ears. So I resorted to tears - out of frustration, exhaustion and fear. But they put me in their car and drove me to safety -- not hitching on the side of the road. It wasn't far and I had hopes that by now they'd have heard of the American kid lost from playing Capture the Flag and they'd return me to my house. Almost with a "ta dah!" type of ending in my mind.

Alas, they dropped me off at some business near Geneva but still in France, in the little town across the border called Annemasse (could be just about any other small town across the border, but I remember Annemasse from my days of buying fire crackers [legal in France], shoving them in my sock & shoes, and then crossing the border back to Switzerland [very illegal to have firecrackers there]...good times, good times!

The business had a back office with a sofa where I sat and cried and cried and cried. I gave them my phone number in English AND French and even my address. The street address numbers now escape me in my old age, but I remember XXX Impasse De Mon-Idee, Thonex, Swiss.

[If you zoom into the map, you can see where our house was and where the border says France/Suisse. They have a pool in our backyard now, that would have been nice.]

View Larger Map
They called the number and it just rang, rang and rang (so I'm told). The three or four people there were nice but on a scale from 1 being crumby to 10 being awesomely nice, none of them could have gone beyond a 5 because they weren't speaking English!! That alone would have earned them 5 points without saying or doing anything else. I was so mortified and I just wanted to go home. Yes, they were nice but not communicating in English and they were not taking me home.My fear now got the best of me and it's foggy, nah, blank in my memory. Or who knows, I was tired and fell asleep.

Next, I was home and in my bed resting. Good grief that was a long day, but I was home and all was good now with the world.

When you stopped at the lady's house, did you speak French to her? How many people did you call?
Don't remember stopping at any lady's house. Might have been what I thought was the business. All they called was the one number I knew; home. It was the only number I knew. No one answered and it rang and rang and rang and rang. Eventually, the Anderson's cleaning lady came over and answered our phone (????), found out what was going on and 'fixed' the situation. I don't know. That's a question for adults who hopefully pieced this all back together when I was safe and sound. Mom?

What did you tell the truck driver who brought you back over the border?
One word: Fuzzy. No clue to the who, what, when, where, why or how I crossed the border. I could make crap up but I won't. Maybe in a fiction book I plan on writing someday, when I get around to it.

Did the border guards ask about you at all?
No clue. Hopefully they were understanding and knew that detaining me and my French or Swiss or whomever saviours were would have caused an International incident and roughly fourteen months of paperwork, press and investigations within the sleepy crossing on Rou de Mon-Idee. He was a young kid and the adults paper's were all in order, let 'em through.

Where did you go once you got off at the border? Mom said you went to Andrews' house?
I'll buy that for a quarter! Don't know. I thought the story went that the housekeeper came into France to get me. I don't recall. Maybe time for hypnosis at the Comedy Club to see if they can pull it from me.

If what you're asking is true, we lived about 50 meters (when in the EU, we used metric baby!) from the border, so I could have managed that walk without a problem.

Why did Andrews' housekeeper know what was going on, did the French lady call her?
My story, which at this point is very suspect in my mind, is how I described it above. She was concerned -- not just Wisteria Lane Desperate Housewife nosey -- that our phone rang and rang and rang for very long durations. Apparently the windows were open and she was a kind soul worried about the constant ringing.

I'm sure that mom can fill in more information, but that's what I know and how I remember that day. Much like falling from the tree in France into the creek border with Switzerland, I'm hazy on the good parts and remember the boring stuff like it was yesterday. Maybe my survival skill.


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So that's the story. Or wait, that's a completely different story than the one I told yesterday. So let this be a lesson to all of you who don't blog. You better start doing it or the important stories of your lives will be lost with the inevitable memory loss of time!

[This photo I included because I've always thought it was cool. Venice stinks. Literally, it smells kinda poopy. But it's super cool and you have to see it someday before it sinks into the ocean. Brett is on the right.]

If you're like me, your brain went to mush during all the walking and running and running and walking and wordy words. But it's still a great story! I hope he prints this and lets his kids read it, that would be cool.

Thanks for reading!